Very few conservative opponents of Obamacare connect our automobile-prioritized transportation network with the fact that healthcare here is twice as expensive as countries that bike and use transit at much higher levels. An annual cost of nearly $200 billion on Type 2 Diabetes passed on to the public will do that.

Leftish opponents of Obamacare (like me) realize that Johnny doesn't need government subsided healthcare - he needs a bike lane and reliable transit. That, and affordable real food, instead of subsidies to corn producers and refiners that result in a glut of cheap junk food in our grocery stores instead.

Get the cost of healthcare down and then have the argument over whether we should take on that entitlement - albeit one that will be much more affordable.

Smugness is a form of self-delusion. You may be at the short end of the stick now, but you have the unshakeable self-assurance that, if you wait long enough, in the end you will be proven uncontrovertably right and you can practically TASTE that "I told you so" moment coming. All you have to do is be patient and wait. And wait. And wait....

"Opponents of bike and walking paths are going to have come up with a better reason than an ominously named UN document."

JF, while I agree with your sentiment, this closing statement is simply wrong. You overestimate the capacity of the American (especially Southern) voter to deal rationally with issues once the appropriate bogeymen are summoned.

Let me put it in perspective: Georgia is a country of 10 million (yes, I know that it is a US state; but if you for a second indulge in mind excersise and imagine Georgia as an independent European nation, it would make a bit more sense). In Europe's terms, it would fit right into Benelux or Scandinavia. Or Balkans.

Now, think about it in these terms: do smaller European nations have fringe politicians? Yes, they do. The conspiracy theory themselves may vary, but they are nothing new. So, why the fuss about the situation in one of the American countries?

Although his ascent to, and longevity in, power is probably more a testament of outright regulatory and institutional failure (the fact that a prominent politician was allowed to own more than 60% of the country's media outlets) than a sign of "lunatic fringes" having taken over Europe's political classes.

He was (emphasis on the past tense) a statistical abberration who, as this publication so eloquently put it, screwed his country. However, his *actual* policies and positions were not almost systematically laughable, as opposed to what comes out of Republican-governed entities in the US South.

"Of course smaller European nations have fringe politicians. The difference is that they usually belong to fringe parties and not the one running the place."

That is a unique difference between Europe and the U.S. They have multiple parties and can marginalize their lunatics. We only have a two-party system (not counting the Libertarians, the Greens, and other also-rans that periodically try to surface for air). As a consequence, most of our lunatics will belong to one of the two major parties. You have plenty of loonies on the Democratic side of the aisle as well. Get used to it.

Of course anything that promotes a healthy lifestyle, like walking and biking, may lead to people living longer, which in turn will lead to higher Medicare and Social Security costs. It is better to be proactive and isolate those people in their homes, or boxes under the bridges, starve them, suffocate them with the fuel emissions and let the illnesses take them peacefully. That way, the budget will be easier to amend to increase the military spending and we can then send more of the younger citizens off to be killed which in turn will decrease the number of children born in the future that will only need to be educated and fed and given medical care. See how that goes around in a neat circle.

Just yesterday, I was talking to a co-worker about her driving habits. She said that she tailgates anyone going slower than her (~15 mph over the limit), and if they don't move over, she passes on the right and gives them the finger. "But only when I have to," she said.

I asked her how she deals with people who rifle through purses and pockets for exact change at the coffee shop, or people who write checks at the grocery store. She said she waits patiently.

I believe in freedom. Suburban car commuters should have the freedom to build their own expensive, deadly, soul-destroying highways without any government subsidy or regulation. I'll take care of the inner city bike paths.

The truth is that highways and public transit complement each other, but they rarely compete with each other outright.

General problem specifically with US public transit lies in safety department, as certain strata of population tend to make it undesirable for your typical taxpayer to use the public transit systems he paid for.

This is because state DOTs rarely flex the needed dollars to transit and bike/walk infrastructure allocated to them by the feds. When transit is unreliable and a poor experience, only those that can't afford to drive will take it.
However, as the percentage of Americans who can't afford the drive-everywhere lifestyle anymore climbs higher into the middle-class, this discussion is being elevated. It's making news because the far-right opposition increased biking, walking and transit is being funded by the stakeholders of car-culture: oil companies, car-makers, and highway builders.
In order to make those who would benefit most from eased congestion, air-quality, and safer streets vote against their best interests, these stakeholders must increasingly recruit those in the lunatic-fringe to spin conspiracy theories to override common sense.

Ugh, don't get me started on this. How about the "strata" that wrinkle their nose at taking the bus because my God, poor people ride the bus! It irritates the crap out of me that well-meaning people constantly want to "give me a ride" because they're convinced I can't possibly like riding the bus. Actually, for me, it's quite convenient and not at all unpleasant or remotely unsafe. So I'm going to have to disagree, prejudice makes your typical taxpayer unwilling to use public transit.

I don't know that highways aren't soul destroying. I used to commute for 1.5 hours each way; whenever I would see some car that rolled down an embankment, was crushed, etc., rather than thinking, "I hope they're OK!" my first thought would be, "So there's the idiot that blocked traffic for hours."

These needn't be exclusive. Lexington, KY, is experimenting with, what is in essence, two separate transit systems based on socioeconomic status. The city aggressively markets the differences between the two systems: the poor people version is a fleet of grimy, run-down buses. It runs between the poorer residential areas to the businesses likely to employ them. Meanwhile, the sparkling new trolley-like system for the rich people features cleanliness, smiling, well-dressed drivers, and only runs between the nicer commercial areas. It also runs late at night to ferry the drunk college kids from downtown back to their houses (in the suburbs).

Of course, as I'm sure you realize, such deliberate division of services between poor and rich does have it's own problems...

I hate people that write checks at the grocery store. I am also annoyed with people who want to pay with exact change, but don't have their change readily at hand (if you know you are going to pay that way, at least be ready so that you can pay efficiently). I can't stand it when people pull into a drive thru and don't know what they want to order. I am irritated when people are lost and drive slowly and aimlessly around, holding up traffic, while they try to figure out where they are (pull over and check your GPS, map, or phone a friend!). I despise people who, when they can't find a parking spot, simply double-park on a city street and put on their hazard blinkers. I revile groups of pedestrians that feel the need to walk slowly four or five abreast down the sidewalk, chatting to each other, and impeding passage for everyone else.
Life is too short to be sacrificing your precious, finite time on this earth on the altar of other people's laziness, selfishness, or incompetence.

I agree, I'm annoyed by anachronistic check-writers. And some people walk too slow or take up too much space. They should be reminded that they're inconveniencing others.

On the other hand, some people, when they've been inconvenienced, will threaten other people's lives with their cars. They should be put behind bars for assault with a deadly weapon, and for murder when they kill someone. Viewing road rage as a cute peccadillo is turning a blind eye to one of the largest sources of death and destruction in the nation.

I can't get anybody to buy in to the idea that since the Federal government bailed out the auto industry, pushing public transit at the state-level is a federalist strategy for sticking it to Washington? No takers?

Well of course, the only threats to America's cherished auto-centric way of life must come from sinister anti-freedom conspiracies, and not by virtue of the model's inherent unsustainability. Industrial concerns vested in the automobile have spent nearly a century figuring out how to align popular thought with their own interests. This is not the first time auto alternatives have been fought with red herrings (historically with blatant racial tones, but of late the more politically-correct bogeyman of one world government). Atlanta of course is the poster child for opposing any avoidable connections between its segregated parts, which just happens to conveniently arrange against mass transit and unified bicycle paths.

American auto-centric way of life is quite often practical; it allows for much bigger cities and cheaper real estate without bringing downtown to a gridlock and subway to a jam.

I think that for a lot of Europeans the idea of being able to commute from your own big house by a car would sound appealing, but for most Europeans it would be very unaffordable to live such life in Europe.

Agree completely Sherbrooke. The problem of the automobile is one of costs and efficiency in the aggregate. Americans just need to keep sight of the fact that among the many sacrifices Europeans make in order to sustain their welfare systems, mass motoring is one of them. No free lunches.

"American auto-centric way of life is quite often practical; it allows for much bigger cities and cheaper real estate without bringing downtown to a gridlock and subway to a jam."

Lets see, 12 bicylists fit in the same area as one car. And I certainly would never contemplate NYC absent the subway. Two way rails also fit in about 1.5 car lanes and can carry something like 30 people in the same area as a car.

What crazy inverted thinking gets you to the idea that cars are more efficient?

Not true. Cities in Europe (at least when it comes to the north-western parts, like Holland) and the USA are not that different when it comes to sprawl. It's just that American cities tend to be farther apart. The median commutes aren't that different, either.

I don't know about Australia, but I'd be surprised if it were much different.

not true, in the uk i believe something like 5% of all the land is occupied by housing, including gardens. The myth of a county full to the gunnels (particularly with those horrible immigrants) is just that, a myth

The U.N. wants to end world poverty as well Mr. Heath. Whilst the attempts have been inefficient and only done so much, the goal is still a noble one. So is ending world poverty a bad thing that will destroy our freedom?

Well, if filling the bellies of the starving people in exotic lands will raise the cost of a Big Mac in Jacksonville, then one could argue that ending poverty would be an assault on some aspect of freedom here at home. Every gallon of gas used to ferry people about the Indus delta is one that won't be burned bar hopping Dallas on a friday night.

In time perhaps we can cut the fog and get to brass tacks--namely to offer food and education to the poor in exchange for voluntary sterilization. Then we can cure poverty in one place without encouraging it elsewhere.

Since decolonization, Asian and African nations have been living through periods of high food prices (which, as it was argued, starve poor people), low food prices (which, as it was argued at the time, destroy the livelihood of local farmers), high commodity prices (which, as it was argued, prevented locals from developing an economy) and low commodity prices (which, as it was argued, robbed the nations of their precious resources without giving anything in return).

Somehow most of these nations still remain hellholes (I'm looking at you, Africa!), while some managed to pull themselves up (kudos to Indonesia).

I suggest that we stop the crazy notion that hamburgers in Jacksonville somehow rob people of livelihood elsewhere. Short of installing North Korea style totalitarian regime (due credit to China for making all the efforts to continue this human suffering) I don't actually see how buying a hamburger in Jacksonville is related to situation in Africa at all. Do McDonald's clients in Florida give Africans AIDS?

I like how your caricature of third-world development ignores everything that doesn't support your business-as-usual thesis.

Low food prices screw local farmers if and only if said prices are lower than cost beyond what can be provided by comparative advantage due to rich-world subsidies. This causes a lack of investment in agriculture. High food prices screw the poor just in general, but still don't provide sufficient incentive for agricultural investment if subsidies remain since food prices are highly cyclical.

Commodity pricing presents challenges that are endogenous to a resource-exporting nation, including Dutch disease. However, weak government is a major factor in all of this - in nepotism and cronyism booms during high price periods, the extraction of wealth without government-enforced benefits to the population, and the crashes when low pricing tanks resource-dependent economies.

This isn't a "liberal" narrative, it's pretty much a consensus among developmental political economists.

Firstly, in case you haven't noticed, I am debating a cartoonish notion that people in Jacksonville steal food and gas from the poor of Indus.

I've heard this argument thousands of time before: people in Africa starve, we waste food here, we're robbing them! However, I don't think that such narrative provides any room for counter-argument: it is impossible to give a good definition of "not robbing" them, as price narrative follows.

Secondly, the whole "West robs Third World" narrative completely ignores a very real problem of bloody totalitarian state of China, which often literally robs people of food. Their "long term supply management" guys come, pay the local boss in Africa, kick people out of land and bring in Chinese workers to work the fields, Chinese businessmen to serve them and Chinese soldiers to guard them - and all the things produced go to China. That's literally robbing.

Finally, it is very hard to define a "weak" government. A lot of failed state are not weak states by any measure, as I cannot call any state that can take away your property at a whim as "weak". Most of the so-called "weak" governments are corrupt to the bone rather than weak, and there is relatively hazy relationship between corruption and economic performance.

"Dutch disease" is a multi-facet thing that is often very poorly understood among political economists. It is often understood as the situation when commodity exports push currency to the levels that makes manufacturing unprofitable; however, in most resource rich third world economies the wages are nowhere near the level to warrant such explanation. What really happens is when one sector (say, oil) is a lot more profitable than anything else, people are unwilling to invest into riskier manufacturing ventures, and young people see that there is no glory outside of the few sectors that fare much better than the rest of the economy and don't pursue opportunities in that direction. People work not because it's fun, but because they have to.

"I've heard this argument thousands of time before: people in Africa starve, we waste food here, we're robbing them!"
Thanks for talking to all those straw people with bad arguments and not to what I actually said?

What does China have to do with agricultural subsidies in Western Europe and North America?

A weak government is easy to define when you are talking about resource extraction: one in which royalties from minerals or other natural resources are either not collected to the same extent as is typical in strong and stable states (30-70%, depending on the commodity and state), or one in which royalties rarely leave the hands of an elite. A state can be a "failed state" and still have strong commodity taxation and somewhat equitable redistribution of that wealth - just look at Russia, which funds nearly 75% of its budget from petrorevenues.